Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR) Established in 1948. After intensive lobbying by Y.C. James Yen, the American Congress included a provision in the China Aid Act of 1948 to fund an independent entity which would take advantage of Yen's experience in the Rural Reconstruction Movement. The JCRR was led by five commissioners, three of whom were Chinese, appointed by the Chinese government, and two of whom were American, appointed by the American President. On the mainland, during the last days of the Chinese Civil War the JCRR carried out a program of rent reduction, guarantee of tenure security, and formation of cooperatives, in addition to expansion of the agronomic and irrigation programs. By one estimate, this was the largest non-Communist land reform program in China before 1949.
But with the impending defeat of the Kuomintang, the JCRR moved to Taiwan, where under the leadership of Chiang Monlin it supervised major land reform, agricultural improvement, and education projects.
JCRR was combined to the Council of Agriculture when the United States ended the official foreign relation with the Republic of China in 1979.
Tsung-han Shen, The Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction: Twenty Years of Cooperation for Agricultural Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970).
Joseph A. Yager, Transforming Agriculture in Taiwan: The Experience of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).